


look what you made me do

by cicak



Series: a friend for all seasons [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bottom Geralt, Filth, Gay Chicken, Goats, Lying on the Cold Hard Ground, M/M, Winter, apologies to taylor swift, farce with porn, gossip is eternal, jaskier is a gay sex savant, r/bardheads, the cicak special
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:53:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: “Like that dandy has ever bedded a woman,” the woman at the next table scoffed. “All those sexy songs of his are about that Witcher.”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: a friend for all seasons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596481
Comments: 140
Kudos: 1706





	look what you made me do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Santheum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Santheum/gifts).



The sky had been threatening bad weather for days with clouds hanging over the scenery casting long shadows that made the world look hungover and bad-tempered. Despite this, it was still really bad fucking luck that Geralt had decided to chance it by hanging around rather than riding hard for friendlier fields after getting kicked off another ungrateful asshole’s land. You save someone’s life, you’d expect them to be even a little bit grateful, but no, there was instead a lot of yelling, a lot of swearing, and a lot of Geralt riding in the inky blackness of night as the weather decides to kick him in the balls.

He pitched his tent best he could as the heavens opened with great fluffy drifts of perfect, soft, awful fucking snow. He shivered and stuffed a cold meal into himself, and managed to get warm enough to pass out after several rounds of emergency rations and self-abuse. When he woke up, the walls of his tent bowing dangerous under the weight of a load of bad luck. It was warm and quiet under furs, but his big toe had wormed its way out of the corner of the fur dumpling he’d managed to make in his sleep and the draft was colder than...well the phrase was a witch’s tit, but in his experience they were soft and warm and occasionally very welcoming. Perhaps instead the phrase should be a witcher’s toe.

Perhaps he should mention that to Jaskier, next time he sees him. He always complains that Geralt needed a bit more wit. “You’ve got the brooding, handsome, leather-daddy thing down” he’d said back when winter first started howling down from the mountains, “and of course, the romance has always been easy to sell, you definitely have allowed me to corner the erotic ballad market in recent years, quite a money-maker after the first of May when the season begins, but really in winter the people want something to laugh over as they’re hiding from their loved ones in the pub.”

Winter. Fucking winter. Fucking fucking cockfreezing winter, with the long dark nights and people who will take his money to let Roach have a nice bed and as much hay as she can eat, but who make him pitch a tent down the road in case anyone finds out just whose money and horse they’re taking. Fucking towns with no good taverns and who absolutely do not go in for that rehabilitation of the noble Witcher that has been going on for the last couple of years. 

Fuck them all. Fuck winter. 

It doesn’t take him long to get dressed and pull down the tent. He layers the furs over himself until he feels like a bowl of highwayman’s stew the day after the cart races, and trudges down to liberate Roach. She winnies at the sight of him, and he can’t help but notice she’s got chunks of apple in her teeth. 

He hasn’t had an apple for weeks. He would take a contract just to feel the sweet crunch and flavour of something other than a fucking turnip. 

God he hates fucking winter.

They ride half a day, Geralt chatting to Roach about all the injustices in the world, most of which are food related, with Roach hrumphing every now and then in response. Around them the fallow fields are untouched, resembling plush, perfect eiderdowns, with gnarled trees like the posts of a fine bed, fit for a giant. The sky is clear after the storm, bluer than at the height of summer and vast, their clouds stolen for the ground.

They make good time to the next town. Gadsend is larger, closer to the trunk road between kingdoms, and today is the mid-week market. He picks up a couple of rounds of stuffed bread from a stall that to his luck were just put out and still warm, rich with mustard seeds and more potato than turnip, and while welcome he only realised after he’d eaten both that he had paid for a beef bread, but still, he feels better, warmth spreading through him after so many days fighting the cold among other demons. 

There are a couple of contracts on offer and so he spends the afternoon laying tracks across the cloudfell fields, chasing down a pack of necrofiends in the woods and revelling in the warmth of fresh blood arcing across the snow. That contract was put out by the publican of the town’s tavern, and he’s a good sort, obviously flush with the profits of winter and generously gives Geralt both his fee and spots him a small, clean room for the night for nothing, and so really, the day has been about as good as a winter day can be. The publican doesn’t even gouge him for Roach’s room and board and so Geralt feels very good when he gets a pint of the pub’s pretty decent beer, and manages to wrangle a table near the roaring fire. 

After a couple of pints and a pie with beef in it this time, the knots and cricks from a night sleeping rough finally start to undo themselves, and he’s pretty happy, all things considered.

The sun has gone down now, midwinter only just passed and so it’s early, but that’s good enough reason for the townsfolk to be calling it a day despite the invention of the lantern, and the tavern is filling up now with the sounds and smells of working folk, the babble of conversation and warm beer and the heat of the roaring fire.

Some of the local women he recognised from the bread stall take the table near his, and he can’t help but hear their chatter, the normal town gossip on the joys of the market, how the weather is never-ending, before they’re joined by the bar wench on her break. 

“Berta! We didn’t see you last night. Missed a good one” says the wench to her friend, probably a baker by the white streaks of flour in her hair.

“Oh god, I thought it was tonight! I completely lost track.” the baker said. “That explains Margaret’s infernal whistling, that girl cannot hold a tune and always forgets the night after the bard comes through.”

“Hmm, yes, that girl is cursed. We missed you though!”

“So what was the new song about? Last time, god, I had to go back and ride Pav like I’d sold the pony and market was tomorrow.”

“It wasn’t one of the sexy ones” the barmaid said. “More romantic epic. Kissing her alabaster neck by the light of the moon kind of thing.”

“God, what I would do to him.” the baker sighed and her friend burst out laughing, beer dripping down her chin. “Berta! He’s young enough to be your son, you randy bitch.” 

“And yet”, Berta sighed. “Don’t tell me you don’t think he’d know exactly what to do? I spent years training Pav up, and he still sometimes acts like women are from another plane of existence.”

“Like that dandy has ever bedded a woman,” the woman at the next table scoffed. She was a busty redhead that Geralt had been trying to catch the eye of all evening. They were the only two people in the pub sitting alone, but she had resolutely been staring into her pint like it contained all the secrets of the universe. “All his songs are about that Witcher his first popular song was about.”

“No!” the women at the first table gasped, shuffling themselves to make space for the redhead to join them. 

Geralt didn’t even bother hiding that he was listening now. Jaskier being in the area was another stroke of good luck to add to a blessed day.

The redhead nodded sagely as she passed over her pints and swung her legs over the low table to come join them, leaning forward conspiratorially. “The signs are all there. My sister heard it from one of the girls at the music college. They’re all talking about it. Absolute ice farmer, that one.”

They all laugh at that. 

“Be that as it may,” Berta the baker said, “that doesn’t mean they’re about the _white wolf_.”

Her redheaded friend rolled her eyes. “Woman, have you ever heard a man care about the colour of your eyes or your zodiac sign? has he ever scryed between your shapely thighs and seen what you keep there? Has he ever cried walking home alone from your hovel?”

“That's just poetry, though” the barmaid protested. “I've never had a poet. Maybe they're just like that. Most of the men in this town can barely write their own names.”

“Yeah well, my sister has, music college is full of _poets_ ,” and the stories behind that word struck Geralt as fitting of a grimoire, “they still only care about their sword end and nothing else. They don't know where to touch a woman.”

“But, but, the lovely countess? The muse?”

“Hate to break it to you lovely, the lovely countess has got two swords and a dick swinging between his shapely thighs. I’m not saying he’s not careful, you know what people are like, but next time he’s in town, really listen to the words, the songs absolutely could go either way. The epics are all about him and the Witcher anyway, cutting down monsters, drinking ale, getting coin, banging wenches” she nods at the barmaid, a prime specimen of professional wench-hood. “But the others? They’re all about the monster that the witcher keeps inside his trousers.”

The redhead’s new friends giggle, and that’s about all Geralt can take before he stops looking at them in bemusement and instead laughs himself sick. The look on their faces when they finally notice him will keep him warm the next time he has to sleep in a snow drift. 

They leave in their embarrassment, and Geralt heads to bed early, not expecting any of the tavern’s entertainment to match up to the idea that he’s secretly been Jaskier’s erotic muse all these years without knowing. 

* * *

Something about the hardness of the winter was doing something to the occult wildlife of the region, and despite the promising circumstances around Gadsend, the contracts dried up almost as soon as he had arrived. He left reluctantly the next afternoon. It hadn’t been so bad, the embarrassment of the baker and her friends had led to him getting actual beef in his bread this morning, and the publican’s horse wrangler had given Roach something that made her coat shine, but better to leave under good auspices than wait for bad weather.

Typically, while they made good time towards the next town, it was while being pushed along the roads by winds that felt like a spear of ice trying to ram itself up his backside. The icy wind chased clouds across the sun by the time he stopped for lunch and then the hail came, lumps of ice as big as hen’s eggs. Sheltering beneath a bare tree and with his bedroom spread across Roach’s head to protect her eyes, he saw a black shape flickering out of the corner of his vision and had run his sword through the opportunistic little shit before he’d even properly registered it and its twelve other undead friends coming for him.

He was drenched and half-frozen when he made it to the next town. It wasn’t as nice as Gadsend, but they rented him a room and the bath was still warm when the proprietor gave him the nod, the water not even too murky from use.

It seemed like he was walking in Jaskier’s shadow, a day’s ride behind him at most, enough time that whatever he was singing was still the most exciting thing to have happened in these one-horse towns. It was mostly women doing the gossiping, but the men were in on it too. Whatever this song was was having a big effect on anyone who had heard it to turn them into a bloody fishwife. He was tempted to just go to the coast, at least there the food would be better. After the respite in Gadsend, it was back to turnips, turnips all the way down the further away from the market town he got. There was enough work and horse-fancying to keep Roach in the manner she had become accustomed, but winter was always tough on the road. He really should turn back to Gadsend and wait out whatever endless snow-front was dumping the area in feet of snow every day, try and wait it out, or at least press their good favour for a sack of rations and ride hard to the nearest city.

Still, it made sense to catch up with Jaskier at least once, see how he is doing, get some human company, and hear this bloody song for himself, so the next morning he rolled out of bed and headed out again towards the next small town.

It was all much of a muchness, wherever he went the next week. People were still talking about the song, still absolutely losing their shit when they saw him for different reasons than normal, and because of the weather he was still obligated to spend more time inside in the presence of insane bard obsessives than he would have liked. This town, Big Yew, named because a slightly larger tree than average was the only interesting thing that had ever happened there (and they’d cut it down a decade ago), someone actually came up to him and asked him outright if he was fucking Jaskier the Bard and then refused to take no for an answer.

It was a woman, drunk as a skunk but very friendly and complementary, and likely deaf by the way she was refusing to actually hear what Geralt was telling her.

“That’s...no, you aren’t understanding the question” she slurred, big blue eyes vaguely unfocused. “Are you…” and she did an obscene hand gesture - thwack-thwack-thwack - of her hands colliding in a way that didn’t resemble any sexual act Geralt had ever experienced.

“No, sorry.”

“Come on, you know.”

“Ma’am, If you know the answer, why ask?” he says, pointedly.

“Titch” she says.

“What?”

“Call me Tits-titch. Its my name.”

“Okay, Titch,” he tries again, putting on that I Am A Witcher Of Legend, Please Don’t Be Scared But Also Please Do What I Say voice that’s a shade below force but still designed to work, “thank you for the conversation, but I will be going now.” 

It’s incredible how a small women can be such an immovable object, but she plonks herself down on the seat next to him, and upon reflection his predilection for quiet corners near the fire is really starting to backfire on him. 

“You don’t have to be defensive,'' she said quietly. “We aren’t closed minded here.” She took his hand and squeezed it in some arcane signal, possibly to emphasise her open mindedness, and swayed a little, humming to herself the tune that was probably what had caused this whole malarky.

Looking at the ceiling in resignation, Geralt sighed. “Fine. You got me. We have slept together.” he intoned with deadpan resignation. That at least was true. He and Jaskier slept together often, mostly after they’d drank too much ale to afford two rooms, or out under the stars on nights far too warm and fragrant to stay inside, Jaskier talking until sleep took him between words.

She smiled and got up finally to let him out. “I knew it. I can tell when it’s true love. That boy pretends a lot, but he loves you. Everyone knows it.” 

And then, she left, and Geralt shook his head, ordered another beer and decided not to think about it ever again.

* * *

The next town was just a couple of hours leisurely ride away, and once he arrived everyone seemed to be treating him with normal levels of interest and contempt, shortchanging him and being moderately unpleasant, so obviously Jaskier hadn’t sung his bewitchment charm of a song yet. 

He finds him pretty quickly, chatting up the barmaid at the tavern that has a crude picture of him chalked up on the board outside. JASKIER THE BARD, SINGER OF SONG, BREAKER OF HEARTS, THIS EVENING AT THE HARE RAMPANT.

Jaskier looks well, wearing a nice new coat of thick curly wool trimmed with coloured ribbon that matches his bardic suit of shot silk, his lute wrapped carefully in furs and skins to protect it from the road. He embraces Geralt, a manly embrace of two firm pats before letting him go, and buys him a beer and some roasted potatoes to catch up. 

They’ve been talking for about an hour when a shadow casts across the table.

“Well, hello, fancy seeing you two together” came a voice over his shoulder.

Titch, looking much better than she had the day before, wearing the ceremonial robes of a tax collector, saddlebags slung over one shoulder, and looking pleased as punch.

“Titch” Geralt growled. “What are you doing here?” 

“Just my job” she said, sitting down, turning to face Jaskier. “Hello, I’m Titch Westmorland. I’m a big fan. Seen you so many times over the years.”

Jaskier was the picture of amusement as he took her hand and kissed it. “I am delighted to meet you, Madam Westmorland. How do you know the famous Witcher, Geralt of Rivia?”

She tittered. “Oh, call me Titch, please. We met a few nights ago in the pub in Big Yew. I told him about your latest song.” 

“Oh, did you?” Jaskier looked pleased, but inscrutable. “I bet he had a lot to say about that!”

She laughed. “Let me buy you boys a drink?” and left.

“Don’t encourage her.” Geralt growled. “She wouldn’t leave me alone last night. Kept insisting that she knew the truth, that you and I were fucking, and I had to admit it just to get her to leave me alone.”

Jaskier looked at him and laughed incredulously. “You what? Geralt, she’s what, half your size, and old enough to be my mother, you couldn’t get her to leave you alone?” He rubbed his hands together. “Oh ho ho ho, this is rich. Hilarious. Oh I will have fun with this one.”

And before Geralt could do anything to stop him, up to and including killing him and disposing of the body, Jaskier stood up and helped fresh pints out of Titch’s hands, smiling at her, putting his hand on Geralt’s thigh and then leans forward and says quietly, “So Madame Titch, Geralt tells me you know our little secret”, squeezing very hard when Geralt started to protest.

* * *

Jaskier and Titch are immediately the best of fucking friends, because of course they are, and she asks all the questions that Jaskier is suddenly more than pleased to answer.

“What about his family?” she says, after Jaskier lies extravagantly about how they met and made love under the waning moon. “Does your father know?” and Geralt tries to say “I’ve never met him, this is all lies” but Jaskier cuts him off after the first part with “Well of course he didn’t know who you were, after what you did at the wedding I couldn’t very well introduce you, could I?” and then tells this ridiculous tale about how Geralt had interrupted the arranged society marriage Jaskier was being forced into, and cut the head off his bride to be for being a monster which is ridiculous because that did not happen, Jaskier still can’t grasp that monsters don’t work that way and anyway, Jaskier is not the type to sleep with a married woman unless she was married to someone else, but Titch sighs and laughs and buys them more drinks.

It was enjoyable, on reflection, spinning yarns for an audience. While he had hated stories about him getting embellished, he has to admit that making this up out of whole cloth for an attentive audience was fun. Jaskier spins bullshit into gold like he’s drinking water, liberated by not having a reputation to fight against. He isn’t a monster, just a fool who takes the tragedy of the world and finds beauty in it, wealds it like a child wields a weapon, danger something academic rather than real. 

The man behind the bar signals to Jaskier that he’s due on, and there’s a thrill there as he gets up, bows to Titch and _blows a kiss_ to Geralt, takes up his lute and heads into the throng.

Jaskier’s a famous bard, and people come to see him when they know he’s in town. He’s well trained, charming, witty and romantic, and all of this pours out of him when he’s performing for an appreciative audience. Geralt’s seen him improve over time, from a young man to a deft professional, seen the way he’s grown into it like his namesake in these harsh environs, thriving. 

For the best part of an hour Jaskier serenades the pub with tune after tune, most of which, Geralt has to admit, are about him in some form or another. Not always explicitly, but he lurks in the corner of all Jaskier’s songs whether explicitly or as a metaphor for truth, power, romance or the quelling of demons. 

The crowd cheer, swoon, clap, hanging off every word and minor fifth, until Jaskier announces that this is his last song, a new song. 

Titch elbows Geralt. “This is it.”

It starts out funny, upbeat, a song about a quest that wends its way around a complex fingering on the lute. Then there’s the twist, taking the song from a normal one of derring-do, to heartbreak in a drop of the stomach. Jaskier’s sweet clear voice, the candlelight, the haunting tune, full of regret sings about neglect, a callous lover, and then Geralt realises that Jaskier is looking right at him, singing right into him, and it doesn’t seem like a joke anymore. Instead, every word seems deathly serious. Searing, a stab to the heart, the truth - that Geralt never could love him, never loved anyone, just a cad, just a handsome bad idea that everyone will regret, but god, they loved him anyway, even though they knew better.

The song finishes and the audience wipes away tears, and Jaskier bows and declares that is all for tonight, and that’s when Titch yells “KISS HIM YOU FOOL” and some of the men turn round and see something they don’t like in Geralt, which causes everyone to start shouting and it all goes to shit.

Geralt wades through the throng to grab Jaskier by his puffed shoulder and pulls him just as someone gets a knife out, and they make it out of the tavern by the skin of their teeth. Geralt throws Jaskier on the back of Roach and they’re out of town just in time as a rock to go whistling past his ear.

They ride down the road at full pelt, dodging most of the stones and continuing until the shouts fade away. They ride along the road until they hit a convenient cart-siding near a farmhouse that looks shut up for winter just before the light fades completely. Geralt ties up Roach and together, he and Jaskier put up the tent, rifling through their packs for food and supplies hidden in pockets, setting a fire, making the best of the situation.

“I liked the song” Geralt says once they’re settled inside the tent, hidden away in a copse well out of town. The fire outside was casting long shadows across them, the furs tucked around them, and it’s getting cozy. It's the first thing either of them had said since they stopped swearing under the barrage of rocks.

“Hmm” Jaskier replied. “It’s not finished. It needs something. Something different. Less...rocky” wincing as he took the pressure off his shoulder, bruised from a flying stone. “Something a bit more suitable for a country audience” he finishes, sighing and closing his eyes.

It's quiet and humid in the tent. “I knew you were trouble…” Jaskier sings quietly, “whisked me out of places I shouldn’t have been” smiling, he raises his voice, “now I’m lying on the cold…” and that’s when Geralt feels the music, feels the potential of the situation and moves in, rolling on top of him “hard…” Jaskier says, voice cracking as his eyes flutter open and inky blue in the half-light… “ground”...Geralt growls in response, and kisses him. 

Jaskier is warm and soft and clean, he smells good, springtime in the middle of winter. Not like a woman, there’s male strength there, a body reliable in battle, capable, strong thighs bracketing Geralt’s as they kissed lushly and rolled around on the furs.

And it would have been perfect, would have been like something out of one of Jaskier’s Mayday songs, if not for the fucking goat poking its head into the tent and screaming in their ears.

“BLAAAAARRRRGHHHHHHH” the goat screamed. “BLAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH”, it repeated. “BLAAAARRRGGGHHHHH”. 

The mood was lost after that. 

“Is it possessed?” Jaskier asked. His mouth was slightly swollen even after just a few minutes of kissing, and _god_ , how would he’d look when Geralt was done with him? 

He forced himself to turn his attention back to the goat. It didn’t smell possessed. It smelled of goat. Which generally was the problem with goats, and why they were generally not allowed inside tents.

By the time Geralt had got rid of the goat (the temptation to set up a spit and belatedly celebrate the solstice was really very overwhelming) Jaskier had rolled onto his other side, tightly wrapped in one of their previously pooled furs, pretending to be asleep, and so Geralt bedded down to do the same.

By morning they were close, sharing heat again, and there’s a moment when Jaskier opens his eyes and it's like last night again, but then Jaskier smiles a sad smile and sits up and allows the cold light of day to wash away the sheen of romance from sharing a bedroll. 

Geralt wants to run away and spent the rest of winter fucking someone nice and uncomplicated, just a diet of wenches, princesses and adventurers and staying away from sourceresses, poets, bards and any emotions that couldn’t be solved with the application of steel or silver. 

Instead, they moved onto the next town, and for all Geralt’s emotional repression it was Jaskier who made his excuses first, complaining of needing to replace his clothes, his pack lying back under the table they had shared with Titch, you see, all very normal, before disappearing in a flash like he’d discovered some of that elven magic that everyone seems to use when they need to leave Geralt, specifically. 

And so Geralt goes and kills some things, but even after he’s disembowelled some nasties his heart isn’t in it. The snow is melting and it’s a beautiful day, but he feels out of sorts, weary in the soul and the shoe leather, sick again of winter and turnips and his own emotions. He considers just riding onto the next town, leaving Jaskier alone and just letting time solve this particular problem, but by the map it looks like he’d be riding through the night, and he’s had enough of sleeping on the ground unless he has to, so sucks it up and goes to find rooms.

Naturally, the first tavern Geralt entered was where Jaskier was, sitting in a corner right by the door, snow still stuck on his boots. He doesn’t look up when Geralt says his name, just gestures vaguely towards the room and takes a long draught of his pint, the thick foam clinging to his upper lip. 

Geralt dropped his pack without word and went to get himself a beer. 

Jaskier had managed to get himself into a beautiful new bardic costume, whipped up by a particularly quick seamstress to fit him like a glove, and the clientele look excited to see him, sending drinks to his table, talking loudly about how they haven’t had a good tune in ages, but Jaskier ignored it, ignored everything, until the awkwardness got too much for even Geralt to bear.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Geralt says.

Jaskier shrugs, non-committedly. “Nope. Nothing to talk about.” 

“Okay.” Geralt sighs, but it worked, because not a moment later Jaskier starts talking.

“I mean, I’m sure you fuck all your friends.” he says, apropos of nothing. 

“I don’t know whether you’ve noticed this, Jas, but I don’t exactly have a lot of friends.” 

“Well, I do.” Jaskier says. “And I do fuck them, okay? It’s normal. Totally normal. A completely normal thing to do, to want to fuck your friends.”

“If you say so.” Geralt says, not really sure where this was going.

They drink for another moment in silence.

“You really don’t? Fuck your friends” Jaskier says, looking at him for the first time that evening.

“Like I said, I don’t have a lot of friends.”

Another pause.

“Are you going to perform tonight?” Geralt asks, after the publican makes another totally casual pass near their table, looking hopeful before retreating to the bar.

“I’m not really feeling it.” Jaskier replies, before taking a deep breath, exhaling it, and then taking another, and launching into a speech.

“What I’m saying, what I’m saying, is that it’s totally normal to want to fuck your friends, to write and sing songs about your feelings, to make this part of your personality, to play with expectations and to lean into what people expect of a romantic bard, and to separate it from who I sleep with normally, right? I’m Jaskier the bard, I fall in love with everyone I meet. That’s the legend. It doesn’t matter that it’s just a song, or its just a fantasy, it’s not real, it’s more than real. But it has to be plausible, right? Has to be the kind of thing that could happen. Even if the monster isn’t real, the emotion is, do you get me? Does any of this make any sense?”

“I think so.” Geralt says, not really sure if he does.

“So, the song has to end in a certain way.” Jaskier says. “There has to be an ask, and an answer. It can’t just end with us being understanding and never speaking of it again. There’s laws, rules in songwriting. So, I’m asking. As a friend.”

“What should I say? As a man who doesn’t have friends.” Geralt says, knowing the answer.

Jaskier’s face is wide open, the candlelight and emotion blowing his pupils wide. “Just say yes.”

“...Yes.”

Jaskier nods, smiles a thin-lipped smile, and goes to apologise to the tavern owner, coughs dramatically, sir, forgive me, a sore throat is the travelling bard’s most dangerous affliction, and gets them a room.

\---

It had been a few days since goatus interruptus, and yet they come back together like all those hours have been just a break for air. 

Geralt had thought that fucking a man would be like all the harder parts of fucking a woman without the soft, fleshy upsides, but he was wrong.

Oh, how wrong, how deliciously wrong.

For one, Jaskier is not playing a role, not one of a woman anyway. He gives back as good as he gets, runs his hands over Geralt’s body, undressing him with his eyes and then with his hands, taking his time to kiss and nuzzle every bit of skin, every scar that is revealed. He doesn’t get tired or over-interested, doesn’t get distracted asking for stories, just treats them like they’re sexually fascinating in their knotted, rough glory, keeps coming back up to Geralt’s mouth, taking his time to kiss him thoroughly, run his lovely deft hands up through Geralt’s hair, whispering all along how beautiful he is, how handsome, how devastating, pressing his fully clothed dick against Geralt and groaning at how he is so turned on.

Geralt growls and throws Jaskier on the bed because he’s had quite enough of that, and rips off the new clothes with complete disregard for the workmanship, and then they’re naked and he feels a lot more on a sure footing, because this is more grappling than conventional foreplay, the way they roll together across the sheets, feral masculinity so strong he feels that testosterone should be condensing off the walls.

It’s not that Jaskier wins, more so that Geralt is taken by surprise by a hand on his balls, sliding backwards, pressing into the soft skin just behind there and he shakes, and Jaskier laughs and presses harder, pulses his fingers and isn’t that a surprise, because now the grappling is sex again, and its snuck up on him. Jaskier sucks his dick so sweet and so strong, and this is foreplay, it’s priming the pump for what he can feel is coming, and then it does come, the touch of slick fingers against that liminal place, inching back until there’s a knock at the gate, and Geralt surprises himself by letting Jaskier reach inside.

It’s strange but not in a bad way, not in a way that raises his hackles, but it is strange. Jaskier knows what he’s doing, how he matches the movement of his hand to the movement of his mouth, until the sensations are blurring together and it’s no strange anymore, its glorious, it’s fresh clean water and warm baths and enough meat in the pie all at once.

Jaskier pulls his mouth off and looks up at Geralt through those long, pale lashes, and there’s a brief moment of tension before Geralt nods and Jaskier nods sagely in return, and then rises to his knees. 

Geralt rolls over, but a warm, strong hand on his hip stops him.

“Here is fine, on your side, I want to see your face.”

It’s fine, it’s fine, and then its suddenly more than fine, because Jaskier whispers for him to relax and let him do what needs to be done, and somehow decades of conditioning take a break and Geralt does just that. He stops trying to direct the fuck, stops working backwards and twisting his spine into a second-guess estimation of what he thinks it should be like and instead lets himself give into the feeling of strong hands on his hips, and only moves in order to get up onto his knees and so it gives something for Jaskier to fuck against. The feeling of getting fucked is just unlike anything he’s felt in his long life, a new sensation after decades of fucking beautiful women and he moans, no, keens, keens like every thrust is making the sparks fly across his whole body, the magic of their bodies like a reconvergence of the spheres, flooding the world anew with possibility.

Geralt understands how long sex can last, always feels sorry and guilty for the women he beds who don’t understand that stamina was one of the most successful mutations he gained. He hates how easy it is to push that little bit too far into pain unless he’s careful (and he’s always careful, he loves women, loves their pleasure, never lets himself get carried away) but now there’s a man behind him and he realises that he can take it, that they made him perfectly for this by accident, so he can take all that male stamina and strength into himself and enjoy it like a glutton, enjoy it in the way he only has been able to a handful of times in his life, match every stroke with his own power. 

Jaskier is making wonderful grunts with every thrust putting everything into it like his life depends on it, and it’s musical grunting because everything he does is musical and yes, the benefits of fucking a musician really is in the understanding of rhythm and cadence and knowing when to punctuate a phrase with a well needed pause before picking it all up again.

Right before Jaskier comes, and it takes him a while, thanks to the beer, he digs his hands into Geralt’s hair and pushes him down, braces himself, and really really goes for it, throws every last bit into it, and then empties himself with a yell that goes hoarse towards the end, obviously the orgasm of a lifetime, his hips pressed hard and his dick jerking and god it is filthy and just keeps going and going until he collapses like he’s taken an arrow to the shoulder, utterly spent, wrung out like rags at the washerwoman’s and with a groan that only bolsters Geralt’s sense of achievement, which is enough to wait and catch his breath, breathing through the deep, agonising level of arousal, until Jaskier sneaks his hand around Geralt’s dick sweetly, thumb tucked over the head and rubbing him, his lute callouses little bumps of sensation and his dick still half hard and tucked inside, and the subtle nudge of sensation of his hand moving his whole body is enough to bring Geralt over the edge, gasping and shaking and coming like a geyser across the worn, well used linen.

“You do that with all your friends?” Geralt says, once he gets his breath back. They’re lying next to each other, sweat cooling on their skin, a blanket thrown haphazardly over the both of them.

Jaskier laughs. “Oh god no. That, that was something else. That was...that was worthy of a song. Of a song cycle. Of an opera.”

And then Jaskier starts humming, conducting an orchestra with his hands until Geralt throws a pillow at him. 

They get a bath sent up, because they are disgusting and it’s early still, and Jaskier shares more secrets of bards with lots of friends, and they get water everywhere and fall back into bed and sleep until the town rouses and livestock start yelling on their way to market right outside of the window.

When Geralt opens his eyes his first view is of Jaskier’s hair curling and still slightly damp from being slept on, and his mouth exactly as swollen and raw as Geralt had fervently imagined from the brush of his whiskers on his soft bardic skin and the stretch of his cock between those lips, and Jaskier then opens his eyes, whispers a salutation, and well, it’s nice to have friends. 

Outside, preparing to go and working hard to not fall into either awkwardness or lust, someone comes up to Geralt with a meaty proposition. The man had ridden for days, hearing that a Witcher was in the area. There was a proper terror holding up a town back towards the mountains, could he come?

Jaskier nods when Geralt returns. “Excellent. I’ll be here for another night, got to fulfil my contract, and then I’ll be heading south again. I’ve been invited to Oxenfurt for the spring, I’ll be there for a month. Just in case you hear of anything happening down that way.”

It’s unspoken, all of it, the promise of this happening again, this new aspect of their friendship, but Geralt can feel the change in the air, that spring is just a few weeks away and even now the green shoots are waking up beneath the carpet of snow, spreading out and preparing to make the world bloom anew.

**Author's Note:**

> For santheum, let's go battlesister into a new fandom, and thanks to bourbonpowered for reminding me this could only really be the title.
> 
> I had the idea of Jaskier being Taylor Swift, that is, in the way that everyone is obsessed with who he is sleeping with, that he uses all his own experiences in his songs and people just take them as being complete truth with no embellishment, which then led me to my favourite old meme, the screaming goat in I knew you were trouble.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aLYvZ5sX28  
> And naturally I then wrote 6500 words about pop music fandom and feelings and fucking, happy 2020 to us all.
> 
> I'm in PhD hell for another year but this fandom has pulled me back onto tumblr, let's be [friends](http://cicaklah.tumblr.com)


End file.
